‘Star Wars’’ Many Influences [Video]

Ready for a great way to spend the weekend? Somebody put together a video that documents all of the various influences that went into ‘Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.’ The two-hour-and-17-minute video basically lets the movie play with scenes from other works showing up along the way. It’s an epic and totally awesome trip.

While ‘Star Wars’ fans are looking to (and bitterly debating) the future of the franchise — which rests in the hands of director J.J. Abrams — many are still perfectly content in dissecting the iconic original. There is, after all, a never-ending well to draw from — something Squarespace interface director Michael Heilemann can attest to firsthand.

Heilemann’s video goes to extraordinary lengths in breaking down the many influences that helped shape George Lucas’ original work. The sheer length of his video — which will later be accompanied by Heilemann’s e-book, ‘Kitbashed,’ offering even more of his research and findings — tell you that it goes beyond the usual well-known points of reference, like Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ and Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 movie ‘The Hidden Fortress.’

Heilemann said the project’s an “exhaustive analysis of the sources of inspiration that led to the creation of ‘Star Wars,’ covering everything from Lucas’ earliest student films, European cinema of the time, westerns (American and Italian), samurai films, war films, comic books, artists, composers and so on and so forth, up to and including the release of the film that changed the world.”

While this is by no means a light watch, the video is worth its weight, showing the original ‘Star Wars’ side-by-side with scenes from the works that inspired it. It’s an epic undertaking.

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